According to the convinced masses, Nigeria is considered the giant of Africa due to its population, citizens’ unique cultures, accents, tribes, and lifestyles. However, Nigeria does not only have multiple tribes, accents, people, and all of those. The West African country also has its popular foods with unique aromas and flavour guaranteed to have you hooked for life. So, if you are planning to or have already landed in Nigeria, there are Popular Nigerian Foods that I will recommend in this article for you. These foods are more than yummy.

Popular Nigerian Foods You Must Eat at Least Once in Your Lifetime

1. Beans –

Beans is one of the most popular foods in Nigeria. It can be served with pap, custard, bread, plantain, or with any other carbohydrate-rich food. It can also be served alone.

Beans has an enormous amount of protein that helps to build the body faster and prepare worn-out tissues.

Although this Nigerian food does not include a plethora of steps in preparation, it consumes time because of the nature of beans.

Bean meals come in different versions and their appeal and taste not only change with the type of beans, it is also affected by the meal of choice and the tribes version you choose to cook.

2. Jollof rice

If you are an active social media person, you have probably seen Nigerians and Ghanaians beefing over which Jollof rice tastes better.

Since I am not in to argue about Nigerian and Ghanaian Jollof rice, I can only tell you that Nigerian Jollof rice tastes great.

Once tasted, it gives you a reason to want more.

Rice is an important block of this food. It is prepared by boiling the water and adding special jollof rice spices to get the desired outcome. If you want to cook Nigerian Jollof Rice – Here is a guide for you. You can also choose spicy jollof rice or party jollof rice. Every jollof version has its own appeal.

Rarely does an event in Nigeria go without serving the attendees Jollof rice.

3. Akara

4. Suya

If you are in Nigeria or planning to visit, go to a road junction, this is where you will find Hausa men preparing steak by drying and smoking method. This Nigerian food is called suya.

This food does not consume time. While drying and smoking the meat or fish, you continually spread groundnut oil and add suya spices to taste and soften it.

When the meat is cooked, add pepper, onions, cabbage, cucumber. 

This instant meal can be served with cold juice like Hollandia or Exotic.

5. Garri

If you are in Nigeria, you have probably heard about garri blinding people or being a point to prove poverty, but that is not true.

Without any doubt, every Nigerian has taken this meal before.

It is a real fast food, which does not require any presence of heating. First, add a half cup of garri on a plate, add a moderate volume of water and ice cubes, add a few cubes of sugar, add groundnut, add milk, then stir, and you can serve with coconut or smoked fish.

Garri can also serve as an eba, which eaten with Nigerian soups like Afang, Banga, Ogbono, White, Egusi, Fisherman Soup, and others.

6. Egusi soup

Egusi soup is a popular meal in Nigeria that is served in most Nigerian cuisines.

This meal is prepared with enormous ground melon seed, oil, stockfish, assorted meat, fish, periwinkle, Ugwu (Pumpkin leaf), and other ingredients that matter.

However, if you are getting it at a resturant, you might likely not spot any periwinkle in the soup, so preparing it at home makes it a better option for you if you love periwinkle.

7. Moi Moi

In English, this Nigerian popular food is called Bean Pudding.

This food can be eaten as breakfast, lunch, or dinner.

Just like Akara, it is prepared with ground beans, but it is not fried.

Moi moi is wrapped in a miraculous plant leaves, plantain or banana leaves, sometimes in transparent polythene, or in plates or metal cans and boiled in water.

8. Pepper soup

Just as its name suggests, this meal is pepperish in nature. If it is your first time, I would not advise taking even a moderate quantity (small is okay) to avoid getting a runny stomach or multiple visits to the toilet. This is because, the extremely peppery and hot spicy nature of this meal could have a laxative effect.

With time, once you get used to it, you can eat all you want with no worries.

Aside from pepper, this meal serves a lot of meat, such as beef and chicken. You can make it with fish, internal organs like intestines or gizards, or any other type of meat you prefer. The secret is in the spicing.

Besides being a unique delicacy, pepper soup is good for colds, so you would see Nigerian mums make pepper soup when someone in the family has a cold.

Men also enjoy this delicacy when they drink. For this reason, bars in Nigeria always have different versions of pepper soup on their menu.

It is worth giving it a try.

9. Chin-Chin

Chin-Chin is a crunchy, worthwhile delicacy prepared in Nigeria with flour, sugar, milk, egg, butter, salt, and a few other ingredients.

All the ingredients are mixed and then cut into shapes before deep frying them in groundnut oil.

10. Puff-Puff

Just like Chin-Chin, Puff-Puff needs the same ingredients, but it is not crunchy, but is made similar to Akara but does not taste like Akara; they have different tastes.

Other Popular Nigerian Foods

There are still popular foods in Nigeria that you have not seen above, and a few of them are –

• White soup.
• Ogbono soup.
• Banga soup.
• Coconut rice.
• Amala.
• Rice and stew.
• Fisherman soup.
• Ekpang Nkukwo.
• Bole and fish.
• Dodo.
• And others.

Conclusion

Nigerian food is the best, and you can tell that after having a taste.

So, when you have land in Nigeria, you can try out these foods and meet other Nigerians to tell you about more Nigerian foods you can try or some Nigerian street foods that will make your visit worthwhile.

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I would also love to know in the comment section which of these foods you have tasted before or the ones you can not wait to taste.